“A federal judge has ruled that Asus’ Transformer Prime tablet does not infringe on Hasbro’s Transformers trademark, in spite of the suit actually making sense,” Devin Coldewey reports for TechCrunch. “As a little kicker on the story, court filings have revealed that the device has produced pre-order numbers that are, shall we say, less than legendary. It’s not entirely fair, of course, to compare a fragmented and developing ecosystem like Android tablets to the world leader, the iPad.”

Coldewey reports, “At the same time, Asus is a big company with lots of ambition in the tablet and mobile computing space, so we can at least hold them to the standard of a large and established company. So when court filings reveal that pre-orders for this poster child for Android 4 tablets… total a whopping 2,000 units as of a month ago, it’s kind of a letdown.”

“As for the lawsuit: it’s not over, the judge has simply rejected Hasbro’s request to have sales of the Transformer Prime device halted,” Coldewey reports. “The case will continue to trial.”

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23 Comments

If I was getting an Android Tab this was the first one I would consider because it seems to have decent specs and the superior keyboard dock. I haven’t heard many good things about it, but if that one isn’t good why bother with any others?

“It’s not entirely fair, of course, to compare a fragmented and developing ecosystem like Android tablets to the world leader, the iPad.”

It’s not?!? Why, because Asus is only one company, compared to Apple, which is just one company as well? What? You only want to compare all the Android companies combined against Apple? That’s what people think is fair?

Well, I think this proves once and for all that the majority of consumers could not give any less of a damn about Android(“4.0!! 4.0!!! Oh wait, why am I supposed to care again?”) or it array of versions, and only use it because that’s what their cheap device is running. Which means that Android is dead the moment manufacturers start preloading some other OS on their hardware, since nobody but a tiny number of geeks have any actual allegiance to it.

Hasbro? A toy maker suing a computer maker? Wow, I remember when Apple computers were considered toys and serious work could not be done on a fruit? Was Hasbro worried about an Android tablet transforming money into junk? Heck, M$ could do that for ya….

To my mind Android as a platform is not inferior per se to the iPad provided you’re reasonably tech savvy by which I mean reasonable exposure to tech on a daily basis. However, this does not represent the majority of people who in the main prefer to have their tech in easily digestible form. This is Android’s Archilles heel, a geek’s love affair with complex tech that only a geek can make sense of. The average man in the street prefers to consume his tech in a form that makes it easy to turn on the device and immerse himself in apps without bothering with on screen widgets. In fact the concept of widgets with the exception of specific tasks like changing settings is alien to the layman because in most respects widgets duplicate the function of an app but in doing so adds another layer of complexity.

Apple addresses the average layman’s market by making complex things simple and in the process make using an iPad a joy rather than a chore. This to a large extent explains the popularity of the iPad. When you interface with something that’s easy to use it almost seems magical in the eyes of the user.

Oh puhlease Android is crap. It is a hack in the plainest sense of the word (cobbled together from hacked up pieces of other products.
Add to that the lack of quality apps (and severe fragmentation) and you have a disappointing experience for anyone (novice to expert)
The only people that android tablets appeal to are the penny wise pound foolish penny pinchers and the chronic apple haters.